Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 694 posts

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#671

Post by taurath »

leereeves wrote: post #632
taurath wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he posted a reasonable and thoughtful response - in it however be pretty much admits he could’ve said some very disparaging things. > I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Recor…

This is such a perfect example, thank you. The outrage machine, ever in search of new fuel, can never stop finding new things to be outraged about. Now it's manufactured outrage about the word "thug", a word used quite recently by President Biden, and not that long ago by President Obama. Suddenly "it’s almost the equivalent of the n-word." How could a coronavirus reporter possibly keep up with that?

When my grandpa used the word thug its absolutely racist. He would call literally any black person without chinos on a thug. That was and is common.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#672

Post by loco5niner »

rrose wrote: post #214
Animats wrote: post #78

We're approaching Orwell's "Newspeak". - Idiot -> retarded -> special needs - Negro -> colored -> Black - Queer -> gay -> LGBTQ - Indian -> Amerind -> native american - Illegal immigrant -> undocumented worker - fat -> plus size - He/she -> they (singular) - bum -> homeless Using the words in the left column can get you and your writing attacked.

- retarded is a slur, people with special needs don't want to be called that. not sure why this is controversial - this is just normal language change. we use different words than we did in the 50s. - queer and gay are both still used, and in fact are both part of LGBTQ, so this doesn't actually fit the pattern youre trying to show. - native american is just a better term? indian is confusing given that there is also…

> can a person be "illegal"? undocumented worker is just a more correct term

In the sense that a person can be in the US illegally, yes.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#673

Post by leereeves »

taurath wrote: post #671
leereeves wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a perfect example, thank you. The outrage machine, ever in search of new fuel, can never stop finding new things to be outraged about. Now it's manufactured outrage about the word "thug", a word used quite recently by President Biden, and not that long ago by President Obama. Suddenly "it’s almost the equivalent of the n-word." How could a coronavirus reporter possibly keep up with that?

When my grandpa used the word thug its absolutely racist. He would call literally any black person without chinos on a thug. That was and is common.

Alright, but what does that have to do with McNeil?

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#674

Post by bosswipe »

jtbayly wrote: post #562
bosswipe wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus is "the son" and Muhammad is "the prophet" of the same God.

If you’re trying to tell me what I believe, you’re wrong. By the way, I’m a pastor. If you’re trying to tell me what Muslims believe, you’re also wrong. Saying that Jesus is the Son of God is very different from saying that He is a prophet of God. That difference is precisely why Muslims cannot agree that Jesus is the Son of God and why I cannot agree that Muhammad is a prophet of God.

Geez Christians can be so sensitive about minor things. You can believe whatever you want, I don't care. But it is a fact that the traditions derive from the same jewish abrahmic God. If you don't like it that doesn't change the fact.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#675

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #505
xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have people pretending it's new so they can drum up outrage and gain power. Because we have people playing the victim after being fired for being intolerable to work with. Most importantly, we have politicians adopting authoritarian attitudes as a reaction to it. Private companies have a right to "cancel" whomever they want, whether that takes the form of banning someone from a website or of canceling a co…

You aren't paying attention if you think people are complaining about being fired because they're hard to work with. This (Mexican-American) guy was fired for a photo that for a brief moment showed his hand making an OK sign out the window of a truck because for a few months the mainstream media tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/new…

Here's a general principle: if people repeatedly bring up the same small handful of examples to convince you something is a broad trend, that means it probably isn't a broad trend. Those examples are famous because they are exceptional. That story made it into the papers not because it is representative but because it is not representative. When something is actually widespread, I usually can't usually rattle off a half-dozen examples because they aren't salient.

I don't doubt there have been a few dramatic examples of people being fired for innocuous actions. I don't even doubt that there's a widespread trend. What I do doubt is that this is a new thing, that it is perpetrated by one side of the aisle against the other, that most people who are "canceled" are innocent, and that we are in a crisis.

>because for a few months the mainstream media tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol

No, because white supremacists tried to convince everyone that the OK sign is a white supremacist symbol. They started it as a joke: "Hey, what if we tricked the idiots in the MSM that white supremacists are using the OK symbol?" Somehow they missed the fact that trying to pull such a hoax instantly makes the association real.

The mainstream media was well aware it was intended as a hoax. They are not completely clueless about how the internet works. I guarantee you there are people from big news outlets reading /pol/ as we speak. See this article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/15/us/ok-sign-white-power.ht...

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#676

Post by danbolt »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #643
danbolt wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Justin Trudeau is left. He wouldn't be the leader of a centrist party otherwise. The Canadian Liberals go right (eg: Martin/Chrétien in the 90s [1]) and then left (Cannabis legalization in 2012 [3], social positions in 2015 [2]) when it suits them. If he was left-wing his fiscal policies would be a lot closer to the NDP. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Martin#Finance_Minister [2] https://www.cbc.…

>I don't think Justin Trudeau is left. He wouldn't be the leader of a centrist party otherwise. Well lets look at the new-left wiki page. >broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, feminism, gay rights, abortion-rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms. That's literally Trudeau in a nutshell. He has done every one of those. >The Canadian Liberals go right (eg: Martin/Chrétien in the 90s [1]…

> That's literally Trudeau in a nutshell. He has done every one of those.

Good. That's sensible social policy for any developed nation. If the Liberals weren't in the wilderness in the early 2010s they should have done those things then as well. They felt overdue in 2015.

While I can't debate the high-level ideals of the first paragraph of the New Left article, its examples of student movements and grassroots activism don't seem like the sort of thing types like Trudeau, Friedland, or Morneau would associate with. The Federal Liberals are far too pro-business and pro-establishment.

> I find it quite difficult to see anything in that list that Trudeau stands for.

Really? I think the Federal Liberals' attitudes tend to be closer to those ideals than their opposition. The SoCon base of the Tories seem a lot less keen on secularism, individual rights, and freedom of speech.

> He's not a Liberal. That's the clear confusion. Yes Chretien and others were liberals.

I agree with you, I don't think Trudeau's a liberal. I don't think him, Chrétien, or the Federal Liberals are ideologically that much liberals either. I think they're incredibly centrist and are interested in popular policies that strike them as good government. The good things about that include Medicare in the 60s and fiscal reform in the 90s. The bad things include security theatre like the recent firearm legislation. If you're less inclined to realpolitik and more principled about something you'll likely end up with the Conservatives, NDP, or Greens.

> If anything, this is worse than the NDP.

What makes you feel that way? I feel like the Federal NDP would have a different paradigm towards spending than the Liberals. Their 2019 didn't even entertain the idea of a balanced budget.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#678

Post by andrepd »

monocasa wrote: post #437
mywittyname wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dixie Chicks are a great example. They vanished from the mainstream basically overnight. People still hate them to this day and probably don't even really remember what they said.

And the attempt to cancel France. Going so far to rename french fries "freedom fries". All because France thought going to war with Iraq in 2003 was a bad idea.

I thought this was a joke.

It isn't.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#679

Post by stevebmark »

bart_spoon wrote: post #265
stevebmark wrote: post #61

What a clickbait article. There's no mention at all of any specifics of "young authors" censoring their work. Instead it's a vague opinion piece about Ishiguro disliking "cancel culture" in general, because JK Rowling took some heat. It just looks like the same story of "I think cancel culture is the cause of all problems" without any specifics.

Here's an article reviewing a few cancel culture incidents in YA fiction, including an Asian-American author pulling her book prior to publication due to an outraged mob who latched onto the marketing blurb indicated the story was about a fantasy society where people were enslaved on attributes other than skin color. [0] There was also a notable incident from last year regarding a science fiction short story in Clark…

Thanks for the articles adding context. The author quoted in this BBC article either is pattern matching and blaming without evidence, or the author of the article decided not to do any research. Either way it's very poor reporting.

Re: Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'

#680

Post by BelenusMordred »

cozuya wrote: post #409
jimbokun wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept is not new, see McCarthyism. What's new is social media's ability to amplify the voices of a small number of relatively anonymous people to "cancel" someone. McCarthyism required a Senator to have a serious impact. Now people are cancelled, without there being a clear link back to who, exactly, did the cancelling.

What are some examples of people being cancelled by a small amount of anonymous people? I can't think of any. Lets looks at Gina Carano for example. She was "cancelled" (fired from her job) as the direct result of her social media posting things a large number of people found offensive and inappropriate, not a small amount. 10 anonymous people didn't cause it, hundreds of thousands of people thought it was wrong.

Thought I'd post what was said that made her lose her job for everyone to make up their own minds:

> Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children.

> "Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews.

> "How is that any different from hating someone for their political views."

Post reply on HN